


The Complications

by orphan_account



Series: Doctor Laghari [2]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, blackwing speculation, this is that other part of the series I was talking about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 18:17:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9837254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Unlike Dirk, Bart doesn't trust Doctor Laghari in the slightest. So the question is, will the good doctor come out of this job alive?





	

**Author's Note:**

> That continuation of The Doctor and The Machine, because I wanted to see how good ol' Doctor Laghari would act around Bart. I might do one last part with TR3 but we'll see.

                Bartine Curlish (she preferred to be called Bart, but she hadn’t told the scientists this. She was lucky if they called her by any name at all,) was the youngest subject at Blackwing, but you could hardly tell. She was mature—most likely from being surrounded by death all her life—and she had the gravelly voice of a boy three years out of puberty. An outside observer wouldn’t have been able to identify Bart as a mass murderer, although people usually don’t expect that kind of thing from little girls.

                Bart would have been the hardest patient at Blackwing to find—constantly homeless and moving around—if she hadn’t made it onto the news for shooting an ice cream man in the head with an Ak-47 and pillaging the back of his truck. It was almost like she had wanted them to find her, although that would’ve been impossible.

                The scientists weren’t afraid to tell Bart about their plans for her, be it because of her maturity or the fact that she hadn’t murdered them yet. They stated right away what her important role in the universe was, but she seemed to already know; although that would’ve been impossible.

                In her first few months at Blackwing, the scientists took the fact that none of them had died yet to mean that she had no intention to kill them at all. Bart thought differently, however.

                 It wasn’t that she thought she shouldn’t kill the scientist, but only that she was waiting for… something. She didn’t know what, but something was definitely coming, and it was more important than a bunch of inconsequential scientists. Bart didn’t bother to tell the scientists this.

                Bart’s room, unlike the ones belonging to other children in the project, was nice. Through a mix of trust towards her and fear of her ability, Bart had a much better deal in general. Her mattress was more comfortable, her room was better furnished, and the doctors tip-toed around her and didn’t bare to scold her when she failed tests.

                At least, they didn’t scold her at first. However, Bart almost never succeeded at the tests they put her through, and it was beginning to wear thin on the project’s resolve. How were they going to teach her, to control her, if they couldn’t even understand her ability?

                “You just ain’t testing for the right thing.” Bart told them over and over again, refusing to tell them what they _should_ be testing for.

                They scientist spent weeks worrying away as Bart failed test after test. They were beginning to get impatient, and Bart could tell, but she wasn’t concerned. It’s not as if they would hurt her, they were too afraid and she was too powerful. They refused to tell Riggins about the stagnation in Bart’s testing results for weeks before finally giving in.

                Needless to say, Riggins was disappointed. Bart was one of their most promising subjects, and he wasn’t about to give up on her. He knew—no matter how much it might hurt the project—that he needed to bring in the big guns.

                Finally, Bart could tell that the something she had been waiting for was coming. She could smell it in the air, and she could identify the sound of its footsteps coming down the hallway towards her.

                Doctor Laghari was probably one of the prettiest women that Bart had ever seen, and her voice was pretty and singsong; but these fact weren’t going to fool her. She was never going to trust the woman, that fact was clear to both of them from the very beginning.

                Entering Bart’s room, Doctor Laghari put on her most practiced warm smile—it had been getting lots of use lately. She let her dark, intimidating eyes focus in on the little girl sitting innocently on the bed, whose feet didn’t even reach the floor. She didn’t take her eyes of Bart as she lowered herself into a chair, and Bart returned the favor.

                Doctor Laghari sat and motioned toward the other chair in the room, imploring Bart to sit down.

                “I _am_ sittin’ down.” Stated Bart, and somehow they were extremely loaded words—and if _they_ were loaded, then the conversation was an entire clip.

                “So, your doctors tell me that you’ve been failing your tests.”

                Bart shrugged. “Yep.” It was no big deal to her. It’s not like they would hurt her or anything. “But they just ain’t testing for the right things.” She continued.

                “Yes, they told me that too.”

                Doctor Laghari didn’t get much out of Bart in that first interview, or the next one, or the next one. She was so much harder to manipulate than the other subjects, it almost made the doctor angry. Almost.

                The other doctors were so afraid to anger Bart, but Doctor Laghari was not the same way. She was borderline mean to her—and needless to say Bart didn’t appreciate it—but she still didn’t yet feel that it was the Doctor’s time.

                It wasn’t long before Doctor Laghari introduced Bart to The Machine, ignoring warnings from the other doctors and even Riggins himself. She was going to get something out of this girl.

                Bart wasn’t nearly as uneasy around The Machine as other test subjects had been, but then again she didn’t yet know its power. She climbed into the seat, happy to humor the doctors in whatever silly tests they wanted to perform on her. Doctor Laghari smiled venomously down on her as the helmet clamped down onto her head.

                The Machine exploded less than a minute into the test, before it even got a chance to give Bart a good shock.

                Luckily Bart came out of the experience totally and mysteriously unscathed.

                “It’s good that you weren’t hurt.” Doctor told Bart, the venom still in her smile. Bart didn’t react, she didn’t need to. The hatred was obvious in the atmosphere.

                No one had ever tried to _hurt_ Bart before, not like this. She’d always managed to kill them before they could get their hands on her. It was absolutely infuriating.

                What was worse, Bart couldn’t seem to kill Doctor Laghari. She would put all her energy into it every night, visualizing the Doctor getting crushed by closing metal doors or snapping her neck after falling down a flight of stairs; and yet, each day she would appear in the doorway of Bart’s room mockingly, without even a scratch.

                It took a month before something actually _happened._ It was a month full of excruciating tests, if not painful then mentally taxing. Some of them seemed to serve no other purpose than to make Bart absolutely miserable.

                The something that happened wasn’t a death, but an injury. Doctor Laghari limped into the offices with dark crimson blood streaming down her nose. She was ranting and raving about a car that had hit her as she walked across the parking lot. It was later revealed that she had broken two ribs and the bridge of her nose.

                Doctor Laghari didn’t hesitate to ask for a transfer, running from project Marzanna with her tail between her legs.

                Bart didn’t see Doctor Laghari again, but her mind couldn’t find peace. She knew that she was still alive, and the thought ate away at her.

~~~

                Ken stared a bit blankly at Bart. This was the most she’d ever said about her time at Blackwing, even counting their time together at the CIA.

                There were a lot of things to process. It astonished Ken to hear about a time when Bart had failed to kill someone that she had wanted to kill, it seemed unbelievable to him. He didn’t take his eyes off of her as she stared ahead at the road, and when it became clear that she wasn’t going continue her story Ken voiced the first question that came to his mind.

                “So, you don’t know if she ever died? You don’t know what happened to her or anything?”

                Bart turned to him, suddenly wearing that maniacal smile she got whenever she talked about killing someone. “Well, no, actually. I _did_ find her. At least, I think it was her. S’pose there’s not much I can do ‘bout it if it wasn’t.”

                Ken doesn’t say anything, but his eyes urged her to elaborate. When she didn’t respond (she had a hard time picking up on facial cues) he said;

                “And? Where did you find her? What did you do?”

                Bart’s grin grew. “Well once I found myself in this retirement home in the middle of…California I think it was. And I see this old lady, waterin’ the flowers out front. She looks exactly like the other lady and everything. Suddenly I could just tell.”

                “Tell what?”

                “Y’know, I don’t know—I could just _tell_. So I just walk up and slit her throat, neither of us even say nothin. And that was that.” She laughed gruffly but didn’t say anything more.

                Ken lets the story sink in, staring down at his knuckles. He’d just heard the story of one of Bart’s killings, but that wasn’t what surprised him. That was old news. What surprised him was that Bart hadn’t said anything. She hadn’t mentioned Blackwing or who she was, she’d just slit her throat without letting the doctor know _why_ it was happening.

                He thought that he could never do something like that.


End file.
